"Watching something originally built precisely as a simulation of the Earth—the 2 in 'Biosphere 2' is meant to differentiate this place from the Earth itself, i.e. Biosphere 1—slowly taken over by the very forces it was naively meant to model is philosophically extraordinary: the model taken over by the thing it represents."

"Just as our city streets are wide enough to accommodate the turning radius of a specific class of passenger vehicle, our office cubicles, kindergarten playrooms, courts of law, and university lecture halls could be measured against the infectious vectors of specific pathogens."

"Whether in fact this man was a returning astronaut suffering from amnesia, the figment of an ill-organized advertising campaign, or, as some have suggested, the second coming of Christ, is anyone's guess."

"Could consumerism evolve into fascism? There is nothing to stop some strange consumer trend becoming a new ideology. Church and monarchy are dying on their knees, and politics is just another public utility, along with sewerage and the gas supply."

"Drained swimming pools in suburban landscapes, gated communities with their security video surveillance, highway embankments, deserted airport concourses, the post industrial nightmare of the end of the western empire."

"The incongruity of the crashed cars and this celebratory social event was further compounded by the alcohol-induced removal of social constraints and the distancing effect of guests watching themselves on closed-circuit television monitors."

"These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice." Reminiscent of the semi-mythological dead-astronaut stuff Ballard wrote in the 60s.

More folklore: "Perhaps elections and the ballot box are little more than a folkloric ritual, along with parliament itself. [...] The chief function of election campaigns is to convince us that politics and politicians are still important."

"Cabin crew perform a strange folkloric rite that involves synchronised arm movements and warnings of fire and our possible immersion in water, all presumably part of an appeasement ritual whose origins lie back in the pre-history of the propeller age."

"I try to write about 1,000 words a day in longhand and then edit it very carefully later before I type if out. I have been known to stop in the middle of a sentence sometimes when I've reached my limit."

Ballard interview. "The chief role of the universities is to prolong adolescence into middle age, at which point early retirement ensures that we lack the means or the will to enforce significant change."